Team Edward’s Sparkle Powder

A few weeks ago, Joe from Rocketship Games reached out to say hello and generously offer some prize support for the Infinity Painting League that I’ve been running in the US Pacific Northwest. I stopped at home to pick up my models on the way to game night, and I discovered this box waiting for me! This was a perfect set of objectives to try out for Supplies, as they’ve got little magnetized boxes that you can remove and then cart around with your troops. Joe was even kind enough to include a set of magnets in the bag! My original opponent had canceled on game night due to family obligations. This was just as well because, as he informed me later, he had been planning on bringing a double Tikbalang list. Gross. Instead, I had the dubious distinction of being the first opponent of Adam’s “Team Edward” list of 4 space vampires, two Umbra Legates and two Umbra Samaritans. I usually play Supplies at 300 without the Limited Insertion restrictions, so it’s been a welcome, albeit challenging, departure from my usual 2x Moran, 2x Bandit, 2x Zero Minelayer solution to the problem.

Deployment

I stuck my Moran right next to the supply box on the right, scattering some Koalas nearby. I figured I might need to mine up the central objective some, so I put Aida in the middle. My Riot Grrl went on the right to help the Moran out if necessary, and I put Pi Well in the center to make a run for the central antenna. I figured I might use the Zondnautica AHD to go get the left objective, but I put it near the middle to give me options. The Kriza went on the left, primarily because there were some useful looking firelanes there. I put the Moira on a perch with her new FD1 skill, figuring I could put her in suppression to lock down the left side and protect my Kriza.I didn’t know what to do with Zoe, so I searched around for a reasonably safe spot near the edge of my deployment zone, and settled for right behind Aida in some cover. She was exposed on her left flank, but that would mean my Moira was already dead, so things would be pretty pear shaped already. Adam started deploying by putting a Noctifier on the roof. He eyeballed the Noctifier’s firelanes such that I’d likely move into view on my second short movement skill, which is dastardly! Team Edward got strung out across his deployment zone, with a Space Vampire hacker and spitfire on each side of the board, basically. The Ikadrons covered two different firelanes, and then Adam added some more specialists on the right by putting Anyat and Kerr Nau down on that side.I didn’t see a great place for Mary, so I put her on my left, under the Moira. This would give me a quicker path to the left objective should I need it. Adam dropped his reserve, a Q-Drone HMG on the roof. The board was dense enough that this wasn’t a really commanding position, but it was going to force me to be pretty careful. We were done setting up, and Adam’s Space Vampires needed their sparkle powder from all the consoles, so we shook hands and off we went!

Turn 1

Top of 1 – Nomads

My Zondnautica raced ahead and I attempted to get a smoke grenade off covering the left objective. Sadly, I flubbed the roll. Instead of throwing orders into setting that up, I went for the easy box and just grabbed the box on the right with my Moran. I think it took two tries, but I don’t remember clearly. In any case, my gameplan was to grab two boxes and then coordinated order retreat the Moran and whoever else the other box carrier was. I will say that the objective markers from Rocketship Games are quite nice to use, and I really like that the boxes come off as a way of marking that the console has been accessed. The pink plastic supply box was also quite good as a visual cue, it’s hard to miss next to your models. I’ll probably paint the boxes themselves some suitably obnoxious color when I get around to painting them for this reason. Just make sure you agree beforehand with your opponent if you’re treating the consoles themselves as S5 silhouettes or the actual geometry, since they’re a bit narrower at the top and you could potentially draw LoF around them. They’re also a bit… suggestively shaped, but that will likely change once they’re painted.I didn’t want to have to contend with the Q-Drone, which I would’ve had to on the left, so I sent Pi Well after the center objective. I had a sneaking suspicion that Adam had deployed his Noctifer cleverly to catch me on a second short movement skill, so I didn’t give him the satisfaction, moving diagonally on my second short movement skill to keep the sniper tower that I suspected it was on out of LoF. Thankfully, I was right, after moving Pi Well out on a new order, Adam revealed his Noctifer to take a shot. I f0olishly shot back instead of trying to flash pulse, granting Pi-Well a -12 and zeroing him out. Thankfully, Pi Well’s ODD made it difficult for the Nocifier as well, who missed.What I should’ve done next was spent my Lieutenant order and then buffed Pi Well to give him shock, then done a Trangulated Fire against the Noctifier. Instead I just did a straight Triangulated Fire, hitting once. Adam passed his ARM save, so it ended up not mattering. I noticed that my Kriza was in movement range of LoF to the Noctifier, so after running the likely numbers in my head, I ended up with 5 on 7’s versus Adam’s one on 6. It took something like 3 orders to drop the Noctifier, which really put a cramp on my style!

Running the numbers, this isn’t surprising. The numbers below are for Pi Well out of cover and buffed for shock, all ranges under 24″, and Pi Well using Triangulated Fire. It’s safer for the Kriza to engage, but more order efficient for Pi Well to take out the Noctifer. Plus then afterwards I could’ve used Pi Well to go hunt some Space Vampires!

Π-Well

Kriza Borac

Outcome

61.60%

1 or more wounds on Noctifiers (Dogged)

44.19%

24.03%

2 or more wounds on Noctifiers (Dead)

42.92%

29.14%

Neither Player Succeeds

12.89%

09.26%

1 or more wounds on Nomads

10.83%

05.45%

2 or more wounds on Nomads

05.13%

01.37%

3 or more wounds on Nomads

In fact, Pi Well with shock as a Space Vampire hunter sounds pretty good, especially the hacker variants, because if I fail to kill them by shooting, I can Trinity through Pi Well’s repeater (assuming he didnt’t Oblivioned). I’ll have to consider using him more aggressively in the future, he’s certainly fast enough and they can’t take him out in one hit without their vorpal nonsense.In any case, at this point I’m down to my last order, so I spend it on a coordinated order to get Pi Well and the Moran to cover. I also use it to poke the Riot Grrl and Kriza out to see Adam’s Q-Drone, figuring that I might be able to out the damn TR bot and set the Riot Grrl up to protect the Moran from an approaching member of Team Edward (the Legate Spitfire hanging out on my right board edge where the Moran is). I launch a Blitzen and drop three HMG rounds onto the Q-Drone.The Kriza comes through for me, taking out the Q-Drone with three hits, but the Riot Grrl gets pasted off the board by three hits from the Q-Drone. Not a great trade, but at least I’ll have freedom of the board on my next turn.I also attempted to get one of the Moran’s Koalas into position to deal with the Legate Spitfire on the right, but I should’ve been more aggressive and pushed it further forward, even if it meant an Ikadron could take a pistol shot on it. Adam knows who my Lt is, since I rolled a 15 on my Lt roll. Given that, there’s no reason to not spend my Lt order on cybermasking my Interventor (who is being proxied by an Intruder since I forgot poor Zero Cool at home). Of course, I fail, and then have to pass the turn.

Bottom of 1 – Combined Army

Adam’s first order is spent on taking out my Moran, as I predicted. You can clearly see that I could’ve easily repositioned my Koala on the right to make this difficult for him. The Noctfier’s order drain really prevented me from getting my Moran to safety, and really just delivered the box to Adam on a silver platter. In a non-LI game, this would’ve never happened, as I would’ve had plenty of orders to get my box carriers to safety. Just goes to illustrate how dramatically different the mission plays in LI. You almost want to go second and let your opponent grab a box from you, then you can send your gun-toting non-specialist troop after it and get it without having to make a WIP roll. Smart. Adam committed to pushing my right flank with his Legate and potentially putting me in LoL. Thankfully, a successful and careful smoke placement from my Zondnautica against the Legate’s spitfire and the threat of a chain rifle deterred him. Adam grabbed his Net-Undermine classified instead, and then was free to set about doing other things…like grabbing the leftmost box, which I didn’t have any eyes on, with his Legate hacker, then retreating to safety. He used a bunch of coordinated orders to retreat both Legates and advance his Samaritan spitfire and Kerr Nau. Kerr Nau barely survived a cross-map shot from Pi Well, since I zeroed him out with ODD and cover. The Umbra that took my Moran’s box falls back to Adam’s side of the table, which will make it difficult to go dig him out.Adam spends his last order getting rid of Aida with a quick super jump from his Samaritan Spitfire, then passes the turn.

Turn 2

Top of 2 – Nomads

I scoot my Moira into position and take out the Legate hacker with a quick burst of MULTI Rifle shock ammo. This lets Mary Problems get her groove on, and I push her forward and Lightning down Kerr Nau without difficulty.I scoot her into the open and SMG down the Ikadron that’s watching my approach to the box. At this point I’m a little low on orders, so I commit to grabbing the Legate’s dropped box.Box in hand, I don’t really have orders to get her to safety behind the Moira’s watchful eye, so I figure I’ll take out the local threat and then attempt to get my classifieds, Net-Undermine and Mapping. Unfortunately, I interrupted Adam’s listing of Anyat’s weapons (its stupidly long) before he got to “Chain Colt” with a “yeah yeah okay,” and then shoved Mary into view.Now, I was faced with the choice of what to do against Anyat’s chain colt. I had a reasonable chance of dodging thanks to Hyper-Dynamics, and I had one order left after this. I figured that since most of Adam’s stuff on my left was dead, even if Mary went down to the chain colt he’d have to spend a fair number of orders getting over there to grab the box, then I could get my Moira or Kriza up there to fix whatever problem I might have there. I elected to shoot Anyat on 3 on 14’s, failed to wound, and then went down to the chain colt. Damn. Without anything better to do, I threw the Moira, Kriza, Pi Well, and the Zondnautica into suppression and passed the turn to a chuckling Adam.

Bottom of 2 – Combined Army

Adam spends a total of three of his five remaining orders to speculative fire smoke to block the Moira’s LoF to Anyat, coup de graces Mary for his second classified, then grabs the box and scoots into the same cover as Kerr Nau.Not the most exciting turn, but a very productive one in terms of points!

Turn 3

Top of 3 – Nomads

I have a lot of things to do this turn. The best I can do is grab a box from Adam to swing the number of boxes (and thus the bonus) back in my favor, so I set about doing that. I roll my Zondnautica AHD towards the Umbra that stole the Moran’s box, contesting a Spitfire ARO with a successful smoke grenade. I eventually get in range, dismount, and attempt to chain rifle both Umbras after driving the Zondmate into base to base with the Space Vampire holding the box of sparkle powder. I’m threatening an electric pulse if Adam shoots back, so Adam CC’s the bike, and tries to shoot it with his Umbra Samaritan a little farther back.

Sadly, I forget about NWI (should’ve dismounted earlier and given the bike shock with a quick buff from Zoe or my Interventor). I also should’ve exposed my AHD Zondnaut to shoot at the Umbras with her combi rifle, which would at least have let me have a chance at doing two wounds. In any case, the bike manages to wound both Umbra, but goes unconscious. Adam elects to stay engaged to force bad decisions on me, and drops the Samaritan prone.I think briefly about rushing Pi Well over there to Triangulated Fire the Umbra that’s engaged, but don’t really have the orders for it. I had started to do it with a coordinated order, attempting to shoot the Umbra with the Zondnaut on burst two, but this fails horribly and I just put another wound on the Zondmate. Pi Well is at least near my Interventor, so I use my Lieutenant order to snatch the box from him in case I have the orders to get Pi Well into play. I don’t, so I change tack and attempt to take out another one of Adam’s box carriers–Anyat. As part of that earlier coordinated order, I snuck some movement with the Kriza to get him closer to a firing solution on Anyat, so I commit to this plan now and using three ordres climb him up and dump 5 dice on 13’s at Anyat. She beats me with smoke. Sigh.I try one last time to drop the Umbra holding the pink box of sparkle powder with my Zondnaut, and then I’m sad and out of orders. I at least had the forethought to move Zoe out to ARO stuff, so hopefully that slows Adam down a bit… right?

Bottom of 3 – Combined Army

At this point, Adam’s won the game, and there’s no need for him to do anything at all. But, we’re practicing for a tournament, so we play it like we would in a tournament. He makes a push with his Umbra Samaritan, killing first the Zondnaut AHD…then Zoe…

and then almost manages to take out both Pi Well and my Interventor, who is holding the box. Fortunately, he whiffs against my Interventor and Pi Well does the last wound. At this point, my Kriza is securing his HVT and I’ve got one box to Adam’s 2 and his two classifieds, making it a

6-2 Victory for Team Edward!

Notes

Notes for Me

A few mistakes from me here. I definitely needed a more efficient way of dealing with the Noctifier, so maybe it’s worth thinking about bringing an Intruder MSR for dealing with those kinds of threats. Would’ve worked great against the Q-Drone as well, potentially zeroing it out. If I do it anywhere, a limited insertion tournament would be the place.

I am really digging being aggressive with Mary Problems. She has a lot of tools to get where your opponent doesn’t want her and can threaten anything up to and including a main battle TAG. Just gotta be careful that I don’t over-extend.

Perhaps the right call would’ve been to use Aida on Turn 1 extremely aggressively to attack the vampires, with all of her shock and viral options. She’s probably a missile and not a board control piece like I had been planning–I just didn’t have the orders to get her into the right position, into suppression, or any of her all-important viral mines on the table.

I over-extended really hard on turn one. That Noctifier ruins your order pool, and an Intruder would just solve those problems…

Definitely made a mistake in Koala placement.

I was pleased with Pi Well’s performance, but I need to get even more out of him, especially with an Interventor’s lieutenant order.

The more I field Zoe/Pi Well, the more it feels like Zoe is a tax to get Pi Well. I suppose at some point she’ll come in handy, and this is classic Nomad privilege–complaining about getting a 0 SWC, WIP 15 Hacker/Engineer.

Kriza continues to be the best. Sometimes the dice don’t go my way but in general he can reliably get rid of stuff for me. I think a pairing of him + an Intruder MSR would knock down any ARO pieces easily, even without access to smoke.

Since when does Anyat have a chain colt! So annoying. I’m not sure I made the right call there, shooting instead of dodging, but oh well. What I should’ve done was just run away, especially since I could’ve put both the Moira and Mary into suppression as part of a coordinated order, and gone for the classifieds in Turn 3. Got too aggressive, and need to think about smearing my to-do list across multiple turns. With the small amount of models on the table, you really need to dedicate 2-3 orders for setting up for the next turn and thinking defensively.

Zondnautica really was key in this game. I think it’s an incredibly strong piece in LI–offers lots of interesting attack options coupled with speed and smoke, both of which are key in LI.

Lots of thoughts about Limited Insertion from this game–I’m very much enjoying this format.

Notes for Adam

I hate Anyat, and know why you love her.

I’m not sure that you need 4 Umbras, but as a list theme, it works!

I think the plan of just grabbing my boxes after I’ve done all the hard work is a good one. Just have to make sure it’s not everyone at the tournament who’s doing that!

Great work with the Noctifier placement. I had a gut feeling you might do something like that, so I didn’t bite, but you’ll probably catch people out with it who aren’t careful!

A little bit of sloppyness with Kerr Nau, but it’s hard to eyeball all of the firelanes at once while doing a coordinated order.